(04-02-2018 04:02 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-02-2018 03:35 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  

(04-02-2018 03:13 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(04-02-2018 02:43 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  The difficult part about a 20 team league will be both adding games to the conference slate as well as a semifinal round.

You have to play the 4 in your division...no wiggle room there.

You really need a consistent rotation among the rest of the schools as well as some permanent rivals because there's no way every rivalry can be contained within your division.

If you play a permanent rival from each of the other divisions then that's 7 so far. Use 3 more games to rotate through each of the other teams in the other divisions. That's 10 total which is ideal in certain respects because everyone gets 5 home and 5 away conference games.

However, you have to find a spot for the semifinal game and it might not be difficult getting the NCAA to extend the season, but that's a very tough schedule when you consider the addition of 2 conference games. It also leaves very little room to schedule non-conference games.

We'll have a P4 and I'm not sure where else the B1G or PAC would go to add schools...perhaps no additions for them.

4 conference divisional games. 1 rotating division (every year). 1 permanent rival. = 10 conference games. 2 OOC games. 1 preseason game against a local FCS or G5 school (mid August but the ticket sold in the season book for the 7th home game) replaces the Spring Game and adds more value. The season doesn't have to be extended. We'll just need a week break between the end of the regular season and the conference semis. If the conference semis were the first weekend in December and the finals the second weekend in December those schools will likely be in the New Year's bowls, and the winner in the CFP. So you still have a two week break before the Bowls and CFP.

As to the PAC and Big 10 they probably merge for athletics and would probably be a conference of 24 to 26 schools.

Three champs automatically qualify for the CFP and 1 at large selection is made to complete the field.

I don't think you could do it that way...throws the balance off.

Every 3rd year you're going to end up running into the division to which your permanent rival belongs. You'd either have to play them twice, not have a 10th game that year, or play someone else from another division in their place. If it's the latter then at that point everyone's rival essentially changes for a single season, but it would never be the same season for everyone. I don't think it would be feasible.

What you could do is simply rotate divisions every year and keep it at 9 games. Try to make sure your most important rival is in the same division as you are and just play the others once every 3 years. Not ideal, but it does have the interesting feature of allowing division winners to have precisely the same schedule as all their division mates. You also wouldn't need the semi.

I would rather have a system that guarantees the permanent rival though.

In those years you rotate a designated school from another division. Since everyone's schedules would be set up on the same format an opening would always be there.

Yes, but the math is complicated.

The problem is one's permanent rival will be determined on the basis of tradition or perhaps geography. That means everyone's permanent rival arrives on the schedule in an asymmetric manner.

So if you're rotating whole divisions then this quirk in the schedule doesn't happen for everyone in the same season. I'm not even sure it's possible to ensure that the same number of schools experience this quirk in each of the seasons during a 3 year cycle.

So while you'd always play your respective team's permanent rival, the available options for a replacement in that 3rd season will be limited by the number of schools experiencing the same situation in the same season.

But it could be even worse. The pool of suitable replacements might shrink even further when you consider that whoever that school is...you have to play their entire division in one of the other seasons during the cycle. So your replacement's division mates become relevant as the year in which they experience the quirk becomes crucial to making sure everyone has a suitable option in the correct season.

Not only would you not be able to rotate through the other schools an equal number of times, but you'd have issues with keeping much of anything else symmetric.

-Ensuring each team gets the same number of home and away every season.

-Ensuring an equal number of home and way games with each conference opponent.

-Ensuring no one school gets favorable treatment or unfavorable treatment with regard to strength of schedule.

And I'm spitballing here, but I'm guessing the fact that each division has an odd number of teams might add an extra layer of difficulty.